Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this disclosure and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Database marketing is a technique used to market products or services to consumers. Generally, database marketing makes use of a database of potential consumers to create personalized communications, thereby more effectively marketing specific products or services.
In order to use the database marketing technique, a database marketing campaign may be developed. The campaign strategy may involve generating actions to take during a marketing campaign, such as sending an email or direct mail. In addition, the campaign strategy may involve generating potential outcomes of the actions.
A user of the database marketing technique may want to graphically represent the campaign, for example by showing the actions and outcomes on a decision tree. However, even a relatively simple database marketing campaign may involve five to ten actions, with several outcomes for each action. The number of items on a graphic of this size can reach into the tens and even hundreds of items. Thus, a flow chart can easily become cluttered, and a user may not be able to quickly understand and make use of the information contained in the graphic.